The last time I skied was the first time I almost died. Although it’s been well over a decade since the incident, the story has become legend among relatives. It’s told with the same relish that campers tell that ghost story about the maniac with the hook arm, except the hooked psycho’s tale is slightly more flattering.

The story always starts the same: “I’ll never forget the scream she made that day — it was like putting a cat in a blender.” Every time my brother relayed the dramatic tale of my near-death ordeal, he would emphasize how my klutziness played a key role. A relative would glance at me, perilously trying to balance salsa on a tortilla chip as I guided it toward my mouth, then nod at my brother as if to say “gotcha.”

I was nine years old and on a forced family ski trip in Vancouver. My parents, graceful and coordinated individuals, had somehow given birth to one child who took five tries to successfully board a chairlift and another that thought nothing of chomping on yellow snow. My younger brother had experienced physical pain before but had the memory of a goldfish, thus the reason he flew down the slopes with carefree abandon. He remained confident that if he were to stumble and swerve off a cliff, Disney fairies would appear and catch him, carrying him safely back to the lodge in time for cocoa.

As we stood at the top of a particularly steep run, I had the same goal I always did: Get down the icy deathtrap as quickly as possible; then plead to be left in the lodge for the duration of the day. Listening to John Denver songs and watching middleaged couples Eskimo-kiss by a fire was a day at Disneyland compared to the effort it took me to get down a mountain without pulling a Sonny Bono.

So off we went, my parents gliding down the mountain like Olympians, and me scooting rigidly down the slope with my skis pointed in a defensive triangle. My brother sailed by me with a grin that was surprisingly cocky for someone wearing a pompom hat. And then the inevitable happened. Considering all the milk glasses I’d spilled thus far in my life, it was really only a matter of time before my lack of coordination transferred to a larger scale. The front of my ski slammed into a log covered with snow. In an instant, I was airborne. And then like a drunken Cirque du Soleil performer, I somersaulted down the mountain. Other skiers quickly swerved to avoid a child who was doomed but wouldn’t ruin their day. I heard my parents yell a mishmash of helpful phrases like “Stop falling!” and “What on earth is she doing?” And then I wasn’t tumbling anymore.

Somehow I’d landed on my skis — backward — and was now flying down the mountain at breakneck speed, my butt pressed against the skis in a kind of painful squat. By now, I was screaming a combination of fear and rage. I was like that character in every war movie that didn’t want to be there — and consequently gets maimed by the end of the film. Gravity was now my ex-best friend as I struggled to hurl my body sideways and stop the madness. No dice. I took a break from screaming to glance over my shoulder and quickly discovered that I was right on track to smash into a massive tree at just shy of light speed.

I raced down the mountain like a mittened suicide bomber and the only thing I could hear were my dad’s frantic instructions punctuated by curse words. As I sailed toward the tree, I realized the words “swivel your goddamn butt” would be the ones transitioning me to the hereafter and I suddenly had a flash of resentment. Someone could at least yell, “We had a good run, Court! Love you!” before I slammed into the tree like a garbage bag full of vegetable soup.

My doom was imminent. I closed my eyes and hoped I wouldn’t be buried in the neon goggles and pink puffer jacket I was currently sporting. And then there was a thud. I lurched backward, then snapped forward, face first, into the snow. In a daze, I pried my lips from the ground and glanced behind me to see my skis tangled in a log peeking out from beneath the snow. It was as if the first log told the other, “I’m gonna take her down, and then when her pants are sufficiently soaked with urine, you stop her just shy of death.”

As my family trekked toward my snowbattered body, their expressions changed from fear to unabashed hilarity and I could see their eyes locking this image into a very special part of their memory vault. My brother spent the next few days attempting to duplicate my death warble and by the end of the trip he’d nailed it. He whips it out with disturbing ease when sharing this story with newcomers (never mind that this was a kid who would stand under icicles the size of rhino horns for 10-minute intervals, his eye aligned perfectly with their pencil-sharp tips).

I’ve never understood winter sports. My view is that if every animal in the vicinity has decided to “sleep this out,” then maybe attempting to turn icy tundra into a YMCA isn’t a crackerjack idea. Getting on a chairlift and watching the trees become more and more scarce until finally a craggy, uninhabitable destination is reached seems perfectly logical to my ski-happy family members. While I see a rotting elk carcass near the top of a mountain as a warning sign, my family simply sees it as a normal part of nature. If I were an elk that had to trek up and down this icy peak avoiding avalanches and searching for a singular blade of grass to get me through the week, I’d view a hunter’s rifle as the angel Gabriel by day two. But one person’s death trap is another person’s winter wonderland, so to all the skiers who manage to make conquering snow-covered terrain look like a ballet: Keep on truckin.’ Just kindly move aside and refrain from laughter when a shrieking ball of arms and legs attempts to do the same.

Courtney Burback’s fiction has appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, while her nonfiction has been published in a variety of national magazines, including Playgirl, Bespoke and Reptiles Magazine. She lives in Santa Ana, Calif. This is her first story for MG